Inside the Star

Monuments to optimism

You may not know Uno Prii's name, but whether you have heard it or not, you've seen his buildings. During his heyday from the late 1950s to the 1970s, the Estonian-born engineer/architect designed an astounding 250 projects in Toronto and environs, all of them apartment buildings, all of them big, tall and hard to ignore.

You may not know Uno Prii's name, but whether you have heard it or not, you've seen his buildings. During his heyday from the late 1950s to the 1970s, the Estonian-born engineer/architect designed an astounding 250 projects in Toronto and environs, all of them apartment buildings, all of them big, tall and hard to ignore.

Though his reputation has had its ups and downs, the opening of an exhibition devoted to his work may be a sign that Prii has finally arrived. The show, on display at the Larry Wayne Richards Gallery in the University of Toronto architecture school from next Thursday to Oct. 26, includes drawings and photographs of his many buildings.

The best known are those in the Annex, typically 20 or so storeys tall, completely out of keeping with the low-rise 19th-century residential neighbourhood, yet still memorable and decidedly iconic.

Even now, decades after they first appeared, these are structures that speak of the future. Little wonder people called them the "Jetson buildings." They conjure up images of winged cars, robot butlers and space ships.

Of course, the future isn't what it used to be. For an architect such as Prii, who endured a harrowing escape from Estonia in a tiny sailboat before ending up in Toronto via Finland and Sweden, the past was something to be forgotten. Technology would lead us out of the darkness of history into a light-filled future where even an ordinary apartment building would become an occasion for celebration.

Almost 50 years later, we feel quite differently about what lies ahead. The future has become a scary place no one wants to go. The optimism of Prii's architecture will likely never be replicated in this or any city.

At the same time, it's worth remembering that Prii was no artiste; he was a working practitioner popular with developers for his ability to deliver buildable buildings on time and budget.

"Everything he did was clean, white and modern," explains exhibition curator and architectural historian Catherine Drillis, who knew Prii until his death in 2000. "His buildings always had a covered driveway and a fountain in front. Younger people thought they were really cool. He was creative and artistic and wanted to make things that were different."

And more than most architects, Prii understood the potential of concrete, a material many dismiss. Above all, perhaps, he grasped the importance that buildings – including apartment towers – played in the life of the city. His interiors remained more or less ordinary; the focus was on the exterior.

"Uno literally changed the face of Toronto," Drillis argues. "He lifted the city up from its low-rise origins, and reshaped the skyline. He was an eccentric, but an eccentric who found lots of clients. He created his opportunity and had a lot of fun filling his niche."

By the time he closed his practice in 1985, Prii's brand of expressionist modernism was no longer fashionable. His towers fell from favour and started to show up on ugliest-building-in-Toronto lists. Since then, however, things have changed yet again and some have received heritage designations.

Who knows what they will look like when the future really does arrive in Toronto?

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